It was the fourth day of the Inca Trail trek but instead of walking towards the final destination, Machu Picchu, I found myself hiking down the mountain in the dark from the last campsite to catch the one and only porter train that departs at sunrise. On the downhill, hundreds of hurried footsteps of male porters came behind me. With me were the only two female porters on the trail. We planned to walk down to the train tracks where we then interview the male porters who were waiting along with us for the train that will take us back to the tourist town of Ollantaytambo.
When we arrived at the train tracks, Maria rallied up the men and explained my presence before them. This was how I was being introduced as a woman, an outsider, and someone who wanted to learn more about the truths about being a porter on the Inca Trail. In Spanish, Maria explained to the men the importance of speaking up and sharing their concerns about their work as porters. Many of them had a puzzling look on their faces and readily held back from our questioning except for one male porter who, in Spanish, shared his views on what work-life was truly like for the porters on Inca Trail. Porters, in general, are fully aware of the risks involved in speaking up about the workforce equity issues they face. For that reason, even a lone male porter speaking up his truth that day could only be deemed a success.
That encounter with the porters led me to launch in-depth research on the workforce issues that porters face on the Inca Trail in 2019. Most of the research was done through one on one interviews as part of an independent documentary film project that I launched to educate tourists and the tourism industry about the working conditions of porters on the Inca Trail. That episode at the train tracks was also the first time I witnessed direct interactions between male and female porters in the context of discussing workforce equity issues that they face as a group.
From an outsider’s perspective, the tension between male and female porters has always been evident. While male porters dominate the conversations and the opportunities to advocate for change in the tourism industry, female porters are only beginning to harness their power and capacity to forge their place in this male-dominated industry. The presence of female porters on the Inca Trail is new, untested, and therefore comes with challenges that are uniquely driven by gender inequities that predate the fifty-year-old Classic Inca Trail. The “machismo” in this part of the world has long suppressed the rights and freedom of women – a predicament that the female porters face in their homes, communities, and even on the four day Inca Trail that is hiked by many foreigners who often hold contrasting and progressive viewpoints on gender roles.
The handful of female porters who work on the Inca Trail which I would estimate to be less than 50 in 2019 reported varying levels of sexist behaviors from the male porters and guides which can range from a subtle unwelcoming stare to outright verbal or physical harassment. At times, the struggle involves being criticized for taking on a traditionally known “male” role of carrying loads on the trail and for taking away job opportunities from their male counterparts. While these sentiments are common on the Inca trail, they merely echo the cultural disposition of women as a whole within the Quechua community. Even before they can become porters, women normally encounter their first challenge at home by way of objections and criticisms that they have to face from their own families. The dissent transcends the male members of their social spheres as women face equally discerning and negative responses from fellow women in their homes and community. Altogether, with both Quechua men and women alike, the narrative that female porters are forced to contend with is that of the domesticated female whose purpose in life is to get married, have children and take care of the household. Although many Quechua families in the Cusco region have moved out of their communities to work in cities and even as far as Lima, the women’s roles in such communities remained traditional for the most part.
In the past five years, the rising number of female porters on the Inca Trail was a result of the efforts initiated by a few male-owned tour agencies to actively recruit and train women in various Quechua communities to become porters. This led to a new business model in which female porters became the primary conduit by which companies attract their new kind of consumers – the socially conscious travelers. As such, the idea of having female porters on the Inca Trail has increased in popularity but not without some element of exploitation. If there were ever any good intentions on the part of tour operators at the outset, these intentions were easily compromised by the way they have marketed and branded their female porters to attract consumers. Often, companies revert to the use of the “saviorism” narrative to attract tourists who become convinced that by buying a tour package with said companies, they are elevating and empowering the female porters. In reality, however, tourists who succumbed to the marketing ploys of these companies are merely perpetuating the tour company’s objectification and commodification of women.
Over the recent years, the mention of female porters on tour operators’ websites has increased significantly. The same can be said about the travel media’s recent shift towards focusing more on porter issues including women when historically these topics have been excluded from the mainstream. In the past, the exploitative nature of this type of marketing and media coverage occurred frequently with the labor struggles of the Inca Trail porters. Now, the same tactic applies to female porters to benefit mainly the tour companies. While the female porters view the portering job as an economic opportunity that can help alleviate their financial difficulties at home, tour operators make use of the female porters as a means to create new branding for their company – one that claims to support gender equity and human rights as a way to attract customers. To what extent these women are genuinely empowered to fight for equal treatment and opportunities within their community or on the Inca Trail remains undefined or unknown at this time for the incentives and power to overcome sexism or gender discrimination largely lie in the hands of tour operators, not the women who are walking the Inca Trail and battling sexism on an individual and personal basis.
At best, the efforts toward gender equity on the Inca Trail from what I have observed remain cursory and often come with ulterior motives. After all, the recruitment and training of female porters are conducted solely by the tour operators; hence, tour operators maintain control over the women. This control is evident when it comes to public relations and the media where female porters are routinely targeted for interviews or as subjects of a promotional video. In these instances, the female porters must be careful in how they represent their work given that their comments can be misconstrued and viewed as affecting the company’s reputation negatively which can potentially lead to problems with their employers. Oftentimes, the media coverage of female porters on the Inca Trail involves marketing the tour company with whom they are employed. Therefore, companies are willing to have all the media exposure they can get on their female porters, thereby extracting and exploiting the female porters and their stories in exchange for financial gain.
To date, there is no independent organization or entity on the ground that is truly advocating for the female porters’ rights and safety on the Inca Trail. Nor are there laws currently in place to safeguard the rights, privacy, and safety of female porters on the Inca Trail. As a result, the tour operators, as a means to retain control, act as the gatekeepers for female porters who are expected to refrain from speaking badly about their work or employer. There is an unspoken agreement that requires female porters to show loyalty to the company that hired them, and as a means to that end, tour operators also explicitly prohibit women from working with other companies.
Currently, female porters also lack social, legal, or political support on the ground. The only organization overseeing the porters’ welfare, Associacion Regional de Porteadores del Camino Inca (The Regional Association of Inca Trail Porters), remains unwelcoming of the idea of females working as porters, let alone allowing female porters to partake in running for office or assuming any kind of leadership role within the organization. Although the actual existence of female porters on the Inca Trail in the past five years is undoubtedly groundbreaking, there is a long road ahead for the female porters of the Inca Trail to break the glass ceiling that prevents them from fully partaking in the fight towards gender and workforce equity. If they wish to advance their status in this industry, they must first forge allyship with their closest adversaries, the male porters, which is a precarious situation to be in since the male porters hold more power over them and are threatened by the presence of female porters in the industry. For the female porters of the Inca Trail, finding their rightful place in the tourism industry will require a significant amount of time and effort. It’s an uphill battle with no clear path towards gender equity.
In contrast, when investigating the roles of the female porters in Kilimanjaro’s trekking industry, the female porters have had over 20 years to carve their place in the industry as the presence of female porters in Kilimanjaro began in 1995. To date, there are approximately 200 female porters that work on the trails of Kilimanjaro. While Peru’s female porters were recruited and trained by tour operators, female porters in Kilimanjaro normally sought out the job on their own. However, there is no actual training or recruitment required to become a porter. Women who are interested in the job can approach any of the porter associations that are currently in operation in the region. The porter associations are member-based organizations that claim to support porter rights and provide an array of services that benefit the porters. For a fee, porters can join as members and obtain the required identification card that would allow them to work as a porter. To avail themselves of a portering job, the women must approach local tour agencies or they can get hired on the spot at the Kilimanjaro National Park entrance gate. The majority of female porters in Kilimanjaro work as freelancers and are hired for every climb either by guides or tour operators. Similar to their male counterparts, female porters perform the work of portering without a written contract which often leads to wage disputes and a work environment that is conducive to exploitative labor practices.
Even though female porters have been working in Kilimanjaro for over 20 years, the sexual harassment and dangerous work conditions on the trails have yet to be fully addressed by the tourism industry. (See Deadly journey: Female porters on Mount Kilimanjaro face sexual abuse). According to Glory Thobias Salema, the founder of Tanzanian Women Guides Foundation (TWGF), an organization that trains and promotes the welfare of female guides in Kilimanjaro, “Women lack any legal measures at their disposal to address the sexual harassment that they face on the trails as there are no laws that are currently in place to protect the women.” This is further compounded by the risk involved in reporting the incidents to tour operators or local authorities which often lead to a loss of their livelihood as porters. As a result, women have no choice but to fall silent on incidents of sexual harassment that they encounter on the trails.
Aside from dealing with outright harassment on the trail, women also endure the lack of privacy as tour operators require male and female porters to share the same tents, which puts women at risk of being harassed. Culturally, the women in Tanzania are subject to strict cultural norms when it comes to their interactions with men. Requiring mixed-gender tent accommodation can compromise the woman’s safety as men can view certain interactions with women as a form of permission to engage in some type of sexual contact. On the mountain trails, the female porters’ lack of safety is exacerbated by having a male-dominated trekking team and the scarcity of females as guides, porters, or cooks to create safety in numbers. Tour operators are recklessly disregarding the safety of women when they choose to reduce costs instead of providing same-sex tent accommodations to their staff and cultural competency training to teach men how to work with women among other measures companies can take to support the female porters.
Any kind of investigation of the female portering in Kilimanjaro in and of itself is filled with its own set of challenges including language barriers as the female porters only speak Swahili. In conducting research, my only means of understanding their work experiences is through interviewing former porters who advanced to the roles of being mountain guides and can therefore communicate fluently in English. In addition, female porters are often reluctant to speak about their jobs for fear of retaliation from tour operators and guides. Glory notes, “There is no form of support or protection that exists for female porters who wish to speak up.” Hence, as a researcher, my efforts to amplify the voices of female porters often lead to silence while the truths about their lives as porters remain far from the grasp of tourists who climb Kilimanjaro.
However, Glory’s organization, TWGF, has helped advance the status of female porters on the trails by providing female porters who wish to become guides the opportunity to train and become licensed. Not only that, but TWGF’s network of female guides also actively recruits female porters for their Kilimanjaro climbs as a way to fight the tour operators’ tendencies to discriminate against women when it comes to job hiring. Charged with the authority to hire and manage the trekking staff, the female guides can use whatever leverage they possess in persuading tour operators, other guides, and male porters to treat female porters fairly and with respect on the mountain trails.
Despite these ongoing issues faced by female porters, there have been some noticeable improvements in the roles and status of women in the Kilimanjaro trekking industry. In particular, having female porters on Kilimanjaro in the past 20 years has led to the shift in mindset among the local people in the Kilimanjaro region. The local people have become more supportive of female porters as they see the financial benefits that the job entails for the women and their families. Today, more tour operators are hiring female porters as the demand for women working as guides and porters has increased over the years as a result of a mind shift among the tourists towards wanting gender equity on the mountain trails. The significant increase in support locally and internationally for female porters is perceived to be the catalyst that has led to the increased visibility of the female porters. As a result of these changes, the number of female porters is now on the rise. Glory and the other seventy or so female guides in Kilimanjaro are optimistic about the increased visibility and status of women in the tourism industry despite the ongoing gender inequities that persist on all levels of the job.
The lives of female porters in the trekking tourism industry are subject to a multi-layered form of marginalization as a product of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. (See A Tanzanian Woman’s Place is on Top: An Exploration of Women’s Participation in Kilimanjaro’s Trekking Tourism Industry). Apart from having to deal with gender inequities, female porters in both Peru and Tanzania also share the same work problems that porters, in general, have to face, which ranges from nonpayment or underpayment of salary, lack of proper food and nutrition or adequate accommodations and gear on the trail, lack of baggage weight control, and lack of health or accident insurance, among other work issues faced by the entire porter community in both countries. Although in theory female porters can join porter associations to avail of some support when legal disputes with employers arise, the male porters themselves tend to serve as barriers to any kind of support that female porters should be equally entitled to have. When it comes to gender discrimination and sexual harassment on the trails, the female porters are left to suffer in silence with no remedies available to them, legal or otherwise.
Overall, the female porters on the mountain of Kilimanjaro and the Inca Trail continue to face precarious working conditions which are largely attributed to a tourism industry that has shown very little interest, if at all, in prioritizing the role of female porters in the trekking tourism industry. Yet, despite this indifference towards women, many tour operators have been keen on using the female porters as part of marketing their company under the guise of self-proclaimed philanthropic endeavors towards the attainment of gender equity in the tourism industry. Similar to the experiences of the Inca Trail porters, the female porters in Kilimanjaro are often coerced to appear in promotional videos or media articles without obtaining their full permission to do so. This extractive type of marketing underscores the industry’s intentions as a whole. Rather than utilizing the stories of the female porters as the starting point for tourism stakeholders to begin discussing workforce equity issues, these stories are often used to benefit the status quo and maintain the current hierarchy for the continued benefit of those in power.
In recent years, the Kilimanjaro and Inca Trail trekking industries have seen the inclusion of women in the male-dominated job of portering. However, to this day, both industries are lacking in creating measures to ensure the safety and equitable treatment of female porters. Ironically, this reality stands in stark contrast with the consensus among tourism stakeholders to work towards a sustainable tourism industry. As once stated by Tricia Barnett, the Director of Equality in Tourism, a non-profit organization that advocates for gender equality in tourism, “Gender equality is the forgotten ingredient in sustainable tourism…Whether it’s getting more women into the boardrooms or improving lives for vendors, tour guides, or chambermaids at the grassroots level, there’s much more to be done.” (Guardian – Women’s places – the fight for gender equality in tourism). To dismantle a system of oppression and marginalization this immense, the female porters in Kilimanjaro and the Inca Trail must find within themselves the courage to speak despite the odds. Seemingly, that can only happen by rallying allies with great power and influence such as the global travel community to elevate their voices. Only then can their voices be truly heard.
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8 Ways Tourists Can Advocate for Workforce Equity for Porters in Peru, Nepal & Tanzania